1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods and systems for selecting a typical pronunciation of a location name from user-contributed sound recordings and annotating a mapping application with the selected pronunciation.
2. Description of Related Art
When using web-based mapping applications and other location-related services, it is often very hard to pronounce the names of locations, like city names, street names, or even public locations, given the text alone. This may be especially difficult when traveling in a foreign country. The audio sounds of some geographical locations are now available on the Internet and commercial GPS systems. For instance, some locations have had their recorded names uploaded on the Internet, e.g., on the wikimedia website. Some commercial databases also store the audio files of location names. These existing systems may not properly pronounce the location names, and may not provide robust solutions for handling a variety of geographical locations. Moreover, the coverage of these databases might be very partial, providing mainly the most popular locations worldwide.